


just another cat fic

by verity



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Cats, Failwolf, Gen, I Blame Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-14
Updated: 2013-05-14
Packaged: 2017-12-11 20:26:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/802857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verity/pseuds/verity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The cat is not Derek's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	just another cat fic

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't know anything about Warhammer.

The cat is loud.

She doesn't greet Derek at the door every day when he comes home for work, or really, any other time - just yowls plaintively from the kitchen while she bats at her half-empty bowl.

"She doesn't like being able to see the bottom," Stiles says. "Food-insecure. I googled it. Also, dude, you should name your cat."

"She's a cat." Derek shrugs. "And she's not mine."

"You just keep telling yourself that," Stiles says, crouching down to scratch the cat under her chin.

—

The cat is not Derek's.

She doesn't belong to anyone else—they put up flyers—but she definitely does not recognize Derek's authority as her Alpha. Instead, she wakes him up by settling in for a nap on his chest at 2AM, knocks all of his Warhammer figurines off the shelves, and sharpens her claws on his couch.

"What are these things?" Stiles says, picking one of the newest victims off the ground. It's one of Laura's elves; she painted all of them with help from their sister Natalie.

Derek bends down to pick up a dwarf. "Some of us had lives before the internet," he says.

—

The cat likes Stiles.

When he comes over to the apartment, usually on the pretext of borrowing one of the books Peter left behind, she trails after Stiles the whole time, curls up on his lap and purrs while he scratches behind her ears with one hand and turns pages with the other. She brings him her little catnip mice, and one time an actual mouse, and one time one of Derek's orcs. "Good kitty," Stiles says, stroking her side.

"She's always nice to _you_ ," Derek says. Which is petty. He feels petty. The cat should respect him: he's her Alpha, he feeds her, he scoops her litter box every night before he goes to bed. Instead.... the cat climbs on top of the two hundred year old grimoire in Stiles's lap, twists around until she's comfortable, her belly soft and bare.

Stiles coos and pets her. "You're engaged in a battle for dominance," he says. "Which is, no offense, kind of ridiculous. She's a cat. Either she's your pet or she's your Alpha. With cats, you've only got two options."

—

Derek is the cat's.

He gives in.

—

Eventually, he gets her a collar. Engraved in neat copperplate on the silver pendant, it says: _The Cat_. The cat won't let him put it on her, but she takes it from him and hoards her tribute.

The next time Stiles comes over, he finds it buried in the couch cushions and says, "Really, Derek?"

The cat purrs.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [ladyofthelog](http://ladyofthelog.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


End file.
